Velocix Introduces Live P2P Streaming

Velocix, the UK-based content delivery service provider formerly known as CacheLogic, introduced a new line of live streaming solutions today, including live P2P streaming. Velocix is already working with a number of broadcasters, such as the BBC, as well as video startups such as the British Joost competitor Babelgum, so we can expect to see more live TV offerings pop up online in the near future.

Velocix isn’t the first one trying to leverage the power of P2P for live streaming. Recent efforts included Joost’s March Madness test, which got off to a rocky start. “It’s a technically challenging area,” admitted Velocix CEO Phill Robinson when I talked to him yesterday. But he believes that his company can do better than the competition.

Velocix as CacheLogic sold P2P caching products, but the company reinvented itself as a CDN provider early last year and has been offering CDN solutions ever since. It developed its own P2P technology, which Robinson described as “a derivative of BitTorrent.” The company’s P2P protocol is backwards compatible with BitTorrent, which explains why it counts Vuze as one of its customers.

The company’s new live streaming product line includes a traditional multisource CDN streaming product and a hybrid CDN approach that leverages multiple cache servers in addition to P2P delivery. Including P2P in the mix could give publishers a break anywhere from 30 to 80 or even as much as 90 percent on their bandwidth costs for extremely popular content, according to Robinson, who told me that he thinks traditional CDNs remain far too expensive for the delivery of movies and other video content. “The postal service is still cheaper.”

Of course, P2P still depends on users installing a client or plug-in, so beating the competition will come down to getting a high adoption rate. Robinson admitted that he doesn’t expect millions of consumers to install the Velocix browser plug-in on their own anytime soon, but he believes that partnerships with large industry players will eventually do the trick.